At The Bottom Of The Canal (Noah MaxwellxReader)

Crickets are louder than screaming

It's 3:45 AM and you have been staring pensively at the ceiling for a few hours now. Your neighbor has polluted your resting hours with blood curdling screams all night. Can you believe that one man single-handedly lowered the prices of all the houses in the neighborhood with his late night wailing sessions?

You're somewhat thankful since you were able to buy yourself a house at half the normal price but your lack of sleep and the drowsiness of waking up feeling sleep deprived are doing numbers on your gratitude. What is he even screaming about? Why is he screaming? No one seems to question this situation but honestly... the neighbors were reclusive and scattered, mostly old and cranky.
To think of it. You and your screaming neighbor are the only ones in this row of houses. Is your neighbor that bad that he made all other neighbors leave?
The estate agent never told a motive for the lack of neighbors but y'know... Do estate agents ever say anything? You could be living in a murder house right for all you know! But you wouldn't risk yourself with a Ouija board around here...

"God, he's screaming so loud now..." You mumble while shifting in your bed. If only you bought those ear buds you saw at CVS a few days ago... If only...

Your neighbor's screaming suddenly ceased which was weird. He usually does that untill sun rise. No, actually he screams until it's very well-lit outside , never in the dark and never this suddenly. It usually stops after a few more sporadic shrieks as the sun rises. "Let's just give him time." You think. And you gave him time , you gave him an hour. An hour of absolute silence.
"Why is he so quiet?"
You could hear crickets, the occasional seagull flying by your open window, a mosquito flying around your bedroom and the distant buzzing of the air conditioning. House sounds you grew unfamiliar with. You don't blame yourself for the sudden shiver down your spin that was brought by sudden fear, you blame Noah, your neighbor. He and his disturbing customs made you uncomfortable in your own home. Oh, how you wish he'd go away...
Or do you? Being alone in your home, among empty houses, in a neighborhood in which people are used to screaming in the middle of the night... a concept that made the darkness in your room all more oppressing.
Anxiety dripped down your legs and arms, making them freezing cold in the middle of Floridian summer. Your stomach was caving in and you lungs refused to let in anymore air. Something was terribly wrong...

"Why is he so quiet? Where did he go? Why isn't he making any noise?" You frantically ask yourself as you turn on the lights. In a matter of moments , you nearly throw yourself at you bedroom window with a flashlight.
The flashlight's beam traversed Noah's entire front yard but it froze along with your whole left arm when it landed over his door. It was wide open, darkness looming from inside, almost staring back at you.

"Where is he? Where?!" You whisper. Your flashlight found nothing despite your joint efforts. Nothing around the house. Nothing in the windows.

You close your eyes and pray for the best as you step away from the window.
"What if..." NO! Stop it! Don't think of things like that!
"What IF..." No, no ,no ,no. It's not. SHUT UP. He's fine probably. No one is in his house. He probably left it open.

No one is in his house... but him, alone, in the dark, vulnerable , fragile, breakable. Just as you are.

The what if's finally got to you but you want to prove them wrong. There is nothing there. And you are going to show your stupid chemical imbalance that. You want to assert dominance over your own anxieties. To show them how wrong they are.

Despite all of your horror movies experience, you still decide to walk outside in the middle of the night with a flashlight.

"C'mon. You can do it... It's only a few feet away."

Noah's house was shrouded in darkness. If you didn't knew better you would have told yourself it's abandoned.
The staring contest that you held against the wide open door to your neighbor's home was worthy of a record book. Not a muscle in your whole body moved as you eyes fixated on the pitch black on the strange home. It took you well over a minute to make the first step towards the front door and a few deep breaths for the first steps into Noah's home.
Horror movies did not teach you anything after all.

The inside of the house was messy , you can't tell if it was because of a break in or if your neighbor was just a slob but you guessed it was a mix of both.

Your flashlight illuminated and guided you around his home, helping you figure out bits and pieces about Noah. You saw pictures of him and his family in hallway. Some of were shattered across the hallway, some of them leaning gently against the wall , most of them still up. You finally had a face to a name, Noah's name. You have never met him before. Only heard him screams for a month every night and got some of his mail by mistake. That's all of the connections you had with him. You have never been interested in hanging around probably clinically insane people until now. Not that you want to spend more time than needed here either but just a check seems like a reasonable idea from a decent neighbour such as yourself.

You flashlight had been handy and trustworthy so far but how you wish it wasn't as it's light reflected into long red smears right in the door frame of a bathroom. There was more red on the floor and walls inside the little washroom. The sink was definitely soaked in all shades of red and the stained towels around it made the view an eyesore.
The thought seeing a dead body for the first time in your life was thrilling. So thrilling , in fact, that you couldn't really focus on anything else. You could say that your body was preparing for an upcoming shock. The anticipation of witnessing something terrifying is a starting point at confronting it.

You turn around, following drips , drops and spatters up the hallway into a bedroom. The blinds on the massive windows in this room combined with tonight's moonlight created long, dark shadows into the ground. Almost as looking out of a prison cell.
The air in this room was so heavy and old and... metallic.

Just now you noticed that the smell of blood in the air was stronger here. Probably strongest in the house.
If there is blood, there is a body. Where exactly is said bleeding body?
Maybe look under the bed? No. That's stupid. Horror movie way of dying.
Maybe behind the door? Stupid as well.

How about in the closet? The closet that stood ever so slightly cracked open right to your left. Figures. A good place to put a body. Your whole jaw clenched as you reach the door knob. A cold sweat now forming on your forehead. This is not how you wanted to meet your neighbor.
You pull on the closet door slowly while trying to regulate your breath as your anxiety spiked again.

You need a moment to comprehend what you see inside. You see a tangled , dark brown mess covering a two wide , terrified blood-shot eyes. The face cowered into a very bloodied white shirt , marching with a pair of very stained denim jeans.
If it wasn't for how visibly the frame shook and how loud it screamed when you met gazes, you could have sworn it was a dead body.
But based on how familiar the scream sounded, you knew that this was your neighbor, Noah Maxwell.